Tuesday March 04, 2025
Rome, Italy

Four months after a resounding failure in Colombia, the world averted a new fiasco for environmental multilateralism by adopting a last-minute compromise on nature conservation funding in Rome on Thursday evening (February 27).
On the third and final day of the extended UN COP16 on biodiversity, rich countries and the developing world agreed to mutual concessions to adopt a five-year work plan designed to release the billions needed to halt the destruction of nature and better distribute the money to developing countries.
– Long applause –
Long applause from relieved and exhausted delegates from some 150 countries greeted the gavel from Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s Minister of the Environment, who presided over this tortuous 16th conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
“We have achieved the adoption of the first global plan to finance the conservation of life on Earth,” she declared triumphantly on X.

We believe in multilateralism”, and ‘we have shown this through many sacrifices’, while ‘thinking of future generations’.
“thinking of future generations”, agreed Ousseynou Kassé, Senegal’s chief negotiator
Senegal, on behalf of the Africa group.
According to Susana Muhamad, this agreement “crushes the ghost of Cali”: the biggest COP on biodiversity, with
largest COP on biodiversity, with 23,000 participants on the edge of the Colombian jungle,
ended without a financial agreement on November 2, after a sleepless night of wrangling.
This success, hard-fought at the Roman headquarters of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization
(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), offers a respite for international environmental cooperation the stalled negotiations on plastic pollution,
the failure of negotiations on desertification, and North-South tensions over climate finance.
The negotiating context was also weighed down by customs tensions, the budget crises of
crises in donor countries such as France and Germany, the debt burden of poor countries
and Donald Trump’s freeze on US development aid.

– Checking efforts –
Wealthy nations and developing countries have already agreed on the urgent need to remedy
deforestation, overexploitation of resources and pollution, which are jeopardizing
climate regulation, and threaten a million species with extinction.
of species.

In the Kunming-Montreal Accord of 2022, they pledged to halt the destruction of nature
nature by 2030, by meeting 23 ambitious targets. The most emblematic of these aims to place
30% of land and sea in protected areas (compared with 17% and 8% respectively
currently, according to the UN).
On Thursday, the countries also adopted reliable rules and indicators, designed to verify that they have met their targets by the time of the
COP17, scheduled for 2026 in Armenia, whether countries are making the expected efforts. “We have
arms, legs and muscles” to this roadmap, said a delighted Susana
Muhamad.
All that remains is to finance the task: the aim is to increase global spending on nature protection to $200 billion a year by 2030.
30 billion of which will be provided by developed nations to poor countries
nations to poor countries (up from around 15 billion in 2022).
However, the way in which these billions are to be raised and distributed is divisive.
The COP16 agreement leaves it to the 2028 meeting to decide whether to create a new fund
placed under the authority of the CBD, as African countries are strongly calling for. Or whether
existing instruments, such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF),
be reformed to be more accessible and equitable for developing countries.
countries.
The agreement is “historic”, paving the way for the financial mechanism we’ve been waiting for
for over 30 years”, enthused Brazilian negotiator Maria Angelica Ikeda,
a key figure in the negotiations.

The rich countries – led by the European Union, Japan and Canada in the absence of the
non-signatories to the Convention – are hostile to the multiplication of funds,
fearing the fragmentation of development aid.
With this financial framework, “we’ve got the dish, now we can look for the food
food”, even Daniel Mukubi, the usually inflexible representative of the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Neither side had to sacrifice any of its positions,” European negotiator Hugo-Maria Schulz told that convinced that the agreement offers “an open and fair process with ‘more mutual trust’.

Despite the setback on finance, the Cali summit did record some notable decisions :
one allowing more active participation of indigenous peoples in the process, the other
creating a “Cali Fund”, intended to distribute a small share of the immense profits made
made by companies in wealthy countries from plants and animals harvested in the
developing world.

Humaniterre avec AFP